Egyptian court upholds death sentences for 9 people over assassinating top prosecutor
An Egyptian court has upheld death sentences for nine people convicted of murdering the African country’s state prosecutor Hisham Barakat in a car bombing three years ago.
In rulings issued on Sunday, Egypt's Court of Cassation confirmed the death sentences for nine of the 15 defendants convicted of involvement in the assassination of Public Prosecutor Barakat in late June 2015.
The court also reduced the sentences of four other defendants from life term, which is 25 years in Egypt, to 15 years, and another defendant from life in prison to a three-year-long jail term. It also reduced another defendant’s sentence from imprisonment to one year for the illegal possession of firearms after being acquitted of all other charges.
Barakat, 64, succumbed to his severe injuries on 29 June, a few hours after a huge explosion ripped through his convoy in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. Witnesses at the time said that the fatal blast completely destroyed five vehicles and blew out windows of several shops in the district.
Two years later, an Egyptian criminal court issued death sentences against 28 suspects for their alleged involvement in the assassination, with only 15 defendants present in court for the verdict at the time.
The verdicts of the other defendants were not considered because they had been sentenced in absentia.
There have been no credible claims of responsibility for the deadly bombing that killed the state prosecutor just outside his house. However, the authorities point the finger at members of Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood movement.
Barakat was purportedly responsible for thousands of controversial prosecutions, including several widely deemed as politically-motivated resulting in death sentences, for hundreds of members of the movement.
The Egyptian government has been cracking down on opposition since the country's first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in a military coup led by former army chief and current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in July 2013.
Rights groups say the army’s clampdown on the supporters of Morsi has led to the deaths of over 1,400 people and the arrest of 22,000 others, including some 200 people who have been sentenced to death in mass trials.
Following the coup, Cairo also labeled the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist organization” and Egyptian courts have sentenced hundreds of Brotherhood members to death, including Morsi himself. The Brotherhood, however, says it is a peaceful organization.
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